James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

Ryan started to pull himself up the rope. It was much easier going with his ankles free, but still a long, dangerous climb to the penthouse. As he inched past the floors, he could see figures running about and he heard almost constant blasterfire.

As he reached the nineteenth floor, a sec man rushed out onto the balcony. The man paid him only a quick glance. He leaned over the rail and, seeing the tiny forms scaling the side of the building, he let out a ferocious curse. Though he had a rifle, he didn’t take a

shot. He turned and ran back inside the hotel. Ryan heard him yelling a warning to his comrades as he raced down the hall.

The rope under Ryan twitched, tensed and stretched. He looked past his boots and saw that he was no longer the rope’s only passenger. Many stories down a stickie had grabbed the end of it and was shinnying up after him, light and quick, like a spider on a web. Even as Ryan watched, five more of the mutants caught the end of the rope and started up.

With the suckers on their lingers and the adhesive glands, he knew there was no way he could shake them off the line, so he didn’t even try. Instead, he redoubled his efforts to climb the rope, moving toward the penthouse as fast as he could. His concern wasn’t just that the mutants would overtake him. He knew the stickies were so stupid that more and more of them would keep jumping on the rope until their combined weight finally snapped it. He didn’t want that to happen while he was still climbing.

When he reached the top-floor balcony, he caught hold of the rail and pulled himself over. The first thing he saw were the bodies of Elijah’s kin. They were sprawled amid shards of glass. The patio floor was a bloody lake. Out of the corner of his eye Ryan caught a glimpse of shadows moving inside the penthouse. He couldn’t do anything about them. There wasn’t time to secure his back. The first stickie on the rope was already level with the twenty-second floor.

He grabbed one of the fifty-pound sandbags and laid

it on its side on the rail. The tag ends of the rope that cinched the bag closed were six inches long. Ryan quickly wrapped the ends around the rope and knotted them tight. Then he pushed the bag off the balcony. It sizzled as it slid down the main line. He saw the stick-ie’s dead eyes go wide and its flabby mouth gape as it looked up and realized what was about to happen-and that there was no escape.

The sandbag sailed down the rope, gaining speed until it smashed into the head of the first stickie, knocking it loose. The mutant spiral ed in space, then dropped in a headlong dive. Still looped to the rope, the bag kept on going, and once again picked up speed. The stickie below swung around on the rope to avoid getting bashed on the head. The bag missed its skull, but the impact of the sliding loop broke the sucker grip of its hands. The bag continued to slide down the rope, and like beads on a string the climbing stickles slipped away, falling off the end of the rope and crashing to the parking lot

“Nice work,” said a voice behind Ryan.

It was Baron Willie Elijah, his face nicked and bleeding from broken glass. Blobs of spattered blood clung to his coarse white chest hairs. The baron held one of the G-12s aimed at the one-eyed warrior’s heart, the fire selector set on three-round bursts.

Ryan thought about going for the Redhawk’s grip, but knew even if he reached it, he’d never get seven and a half inches of barrel out of the front of his pants before Elijah drilled him. He slowly raised his hands.

THE BLASTERFIRE and explosions from inside the compound gave the mutie slaves in the baron’s fields their first clue that Willie ville was under assault. They stopped whatever they were doing, straightened from the rows of crops, leaned on the handles of their shovels and turned toward the sounds of the pitched battle.